Learning Things on the Job
by MidnightNereid
Summary: "I can't tell you the secret of life, or what flavor of ice cream you should eat for Friday outing with your family. But I can tell you what it's like when your very existence is a practical joke." Hecate, Artemis, and a son of the Maiden Goddess. Or was it the Maiden Goddess's hair? Hard to tell. A mix of adventure, humor and srs business.


So you might ask, what the hell am I doing here with a fricken "child of Artemis" story, eh? Truth be told, I don't know either. But my young friend who shall not be named informed me the other day that apparently all stories of this kind suck, so I'm here to hopefully put a dent in that reputation.

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**_Learning Things on the Job_**

_by MidnightNereid_

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**Lesson One: Never Give Someone Your Hair**

Sometimes, I had to wonder when all of it had started–before I instantly recalled and _knew_ how anyway. But it was good to wonder.

It didn't begin with me, that was for certain. Some frail child with gray eyes and auburn hair who looked suspiciously like a Greek goddess? No, not me. Too conspicuous. Too…shallow. The truth went much deeper, back to the old days where the Titans didn't almost win a "war" in Manhattan, New York and rule humanity. The voices told me it went back to the years where Rome was still alive, still healthy, and when the gods still ran amok making babies left and right. No offense to them, but the truth remained the truth.

The grudge started on a summer. Rome, the Golden Age, BCE 40. Outside of the city, about ten miles north, there was a patch of woods. The Romans did not worship the Goddess of the Hunt as eagerly as they did the other big ones – you know, Jupiter, Mars, Neptune – but that did not mean she had faded from existence. She was still going strong, leading her little army of handmaidens armed with bows and arrows across the land looking for monsters before they preyed on the innocent…and because it entertained her. This patch of woods, it was a favorite spot of Artemis. There was a stream, clear and beautiful, which ran across it. Because it flowed downhill towards Rome the water was kept clean. Game was plentiful here, most of them just elusive enough to make it not all that boring to track down, and a good place to train the youngest of her group. Whenever Artemis passed by the region, she would stop in this place for a rest. A picnic. Idle chatters and maybe a bath in the stream with trigger-happy Huntresses standing guard.

There was nothing wrong with this. Occasionally the unlucky male hunter wandered in and got fed to the wolves, but that was the normal mortal incident – how dare we interrupt the gods and goddesses when they walk all over our lands? – so nobody really paid heed to the area or Artemis herself. The problem, for once, didn't stem from mortal involvement. It stemmed from another source.

No, not Pan, surprisingly enough. The old chap didn't quite like Rome. Maybe he knew it would become polluted and filled with fat politicians in a couple of decades, but either way he kept more to the _true_ wilderness. The problem was Hecate.

Much like Artemis, the Goddess of Magic kept a few disciples of her own, and sometimes she would take them out to a certain spot in the woods to teach them a little in the way of magic as any good teacher would do. Usually she let them run wild and try to maim one another with all their cleverness and their sorcery, but sometimes she actually taught them, too. Either way, those woods were also her favorite because there was a clearing in the middle which caught the light of a full moon _just_ right, and sorcery drawn from astronomical positions were strongest on those nights.

One full moon night where Hecate was set to perform a ritual which required the power boost, she approached the clearing only to find Artemis and her entire Huntress squad spread out all over it. A polite exchange did no good; Artemis had arrived there first and maintained that as such, she would be the one to keep the clearing to her and her own for the night. This made well enough sense in context; it was mostly how the world worked and how Artemis worked. Hecate, however, was not so pleased. She was a solitary goddess with nothing and no one to tell her what to do, her realm of ruling was well beyond the scope of a mere mortal man, and she was not one to back down from a challenge.

So she made a wager. Or rather, she proposed a game – that of hide and seek. All of the Huntresses would be sent to hide, and by the time the moon rose to its peak Hecate's disciples would have found them all. If this was to be done, then Artemis must leave the clearing. If it was not, then Hecate would gracefully back down and leave them to their moon-gazing. They agreed on one more detail: whoever was the loser, would owe the winner a favor. And as they were both immortals, a favor was a Very Big Deal.

It was a simple thing in concept and execution, and Artemis loved games. She declined the male members of Hecate's students to join in, to which the Goddess of Magic accepted, and Artemis deemed this as her lowering her own chances. No protests were made, however, and soon the game began. Artemis's Huntresses, well-versed in the ways of the wild against Hecate's dozen of female students dressed in togas and sandals and who also probably spent too many hours among dusty papyrus scrolls.

By logic's standards, it should not be much of a competition. By reality's standards, it really wasn't – but not in the way one would think. The moon had not even fully risen by the time the disciples returned with all of Artemis's handmaidens caught and bound. Enraged at her loss, the Goddess of the Hunt accused Hecate of cheating, to which the woman denied. She made her swear on the River Styx and then say it again, but again Hecate smoothly admitted to never having cheated. Frustrated but seeing no way out of it, Artemis grudgingly lived by her words and pulled her Huntresses out of the woods, promising Hecate that she would indeed owe her a favor.

Much to her surprise, Hecate cashed it in right there. She asked for a lock of Artemis's auburn hair. Puzzled and wary, the young goddess did as was asked. They parted ways on relatively good terms, even if Artemis forbade this fiasco and her loss from ever being mentioned. Hecate, seeming a graceful winner, also politely deflected any inquiries to her regarding this minor encounter and did not allow her own pupils to say anything of it, either.

The lock of Artemis's hair, the Goddess of Magic kept locked away safely in a trunk in her personal chambers until, as she said, "The time comes." And when it did come, hundreds of years later on Halloween in the twenty-first century when she spotted a man who caught her fancy – auburn hair, dark eyes. Conspicuously bearing several coincidental resemblances to a particular goddess. She courted him, but never laid with him. Instead she extracted from the man a vial of his blood and returned to her chambers. She sought out some soft clay, chalk, a few herbs and charcoal, and performed a magical rite that was as old as the Titans. She used Artemis's hair and the young man's blood with the clay, molded it, and produced something most foul. Something that was of the forest, of knowledge, of magic, and someone who allegedly will be her greatest creature yet.

There upon the stone pedestal in Hecate's chambers came to be the son of Artemis.

Then she sent him home to his father so he could live his life peacefully until he was noticed, until Artemis finally noticed her brilliant, _brilliant_ prank.

She sent _me_ home.

Halloween. October 31. 1992. My creation date.

(Expiration date undetermined.)


End file.
